-M.L.Tyler.

Introduction:
(It was coming across the following that determined the choice of Apis for our present drug picture) “In 1847, the attention of the writer was first directed to Apis mellifica as a remedial agent by the following unique cure. “A lad,aged about 12 years,had been afflicted for several months with ascites and hydrothorax. He had been treated for some three months by allopathic physicians first for dysentery,followed by ascites, and afterwards for several months by a Homoeopathic physician. No permanent benefit resulted from either mode of medication, and the symptoms finally came so urgent that I was called in consultation,and tapping was at once resorted to in to order to save the patient from imminent danger. Appropriate Homoeopathic remedies were again prescribed but without arresting the onward course of the malady. The patient commenced to fill up again with great rapidity. The secretion of urine was nearly suspended,the skin was dry and hot, pulse rapid and weak,respiration short and difficult , great tenderness of the abdomen, dryness of the mouth and throat, thirst, excessive restlessness and anxiety, short irritating cough, and an almost entire inability to sleep. “At this stage of the case a strolling Indian woman-one of the few survivors of the Narragansett tribe, suggested to the family the use of a honey bee every night and morning. She enclosed the bees in a covered tin pail,and placed them in a heated oven until they we killed,and then after powdering them, administered one in syrup every night and morning. After the lapse of about twenty- four hours the skin became less hot and softer, the respiration less difficult and more free,the pulse slower and more developed., and there was a decided increase in the quantity of urine. From this time the symptoms continued steadily to improve, the dropsical effusion diminished day by day, until at the expiration of a few weeks, the patient was entirely cured. “This was the first cure of dropsy by Apis which was ever reported. From this empirical fact-this use in morbis, I perceived that the profession was as yet unacquainted with a powerful remedial agent, and accordingly commenced a series of provings and clinical trials with it.” Dr.E.E. MARCY and others: Elements of a New Materia Medica, p.442. And Kent says, “It is queer how old women know,long before Apis was proved,that when the little new-born baby did not pass its water they could find a cure by going out to the bee-hive and catching a few bees,over which they poured hot water, and of which they gave the baby a teaspoonful;. Some domestic things like that have been known among families and among nurses,and it is consistent, because it is it just like what we give Apis for.” Some of our most valuable medicines have come from domestic use, from herbalistic lore, from accidental poisonings, from observing the effects of bites and stings of poisonous reptiles and insects, from traditions of country-folk and savages. But Homoeopathy leaps at knowledge in any form, and by testing or “proving” the poisonous material (for it must be remembered that all medicines are poisons,and all poisons can be used as remedial agents) it makes them,one by one, scientific, by disclosing their true uses,and the exact symptoms on which they can be prescribed with confidence. There are different preparations of Apis, “there is but one right one”, says Hering. It is “the pure poison obtained by grasping the bee with a small forceps,and catching the minute drop of virus suspended from the point of the sitting in a vial or watch glass. This is potentized”-according to directions. He says the foreign matter and impurities. It is Guernsey, Kent and Nash who give valuable pictures of Apis. GUERNSEY says,k “:The PAINS are like bee-stings, with the thirst and the burning following. Scanty urine. Shrill,sudden piercing screams while sleeping or waking, form invaluable keynotes to the use of this remedy.” HERING’S description is, “redness and swelling, with stinging and burning pains-in eyes-eyelids-ears face-lips-tongue-throat- anus-testicles”, with relief from cold, and aggravation from heat. Apis has very definite symptoms,and is very definite in the tissues it affects,m and in the way in which it affects them. It affects,as KENT points out , the coverings of the body: not only the skin and the mucous membranes,m but also the coverings of oranges-the meninges of the brain-the pericardium; and always in the same way,with swellings,dropsical conditions, and its own peculiar stinging and burning pains. These sharp stinging pains often export a shriek, as the crie cerebral of meningitis. And everywhere where there is the Apis swelling, oedema, stinging and burning,there is the Apis aggravation from heat: aggravation from a hot room, aggravation from the heat of the fire, aggravation from a hot room,aggravation from the heat of the fire, aggravation from a hot bath. Kent says, “in brain troubles, if you put an Apis patient with congestion of the brain into a hot bath he will go into convulsions,and consequently you see that warm bathing is not always ‘good for fits’. It is taught in Old School text-books so much that the old women and nurses know that a hot bath is good for fits, and before you get there just as like as not you will have a dead baby. This congestion of the brain, with little twitchings and threatening convulsions, makes them put the baby in a hot bath, and it is in an awful state when you get there. If the baby needs Opium or Apis in congestion of the fits become worse by bathing in hot water. In the nurse has been doing that kind of business you have learned the remedy as soon as you enter the house, for she will say the child has been worse ever since the warm bath, has become pale as a ghost and she was afraid he was going to die. There you have convulsions far worse from heat, pointing especially to Opium and Apis.” Kent says, “Apis is full of dropsy,red rash, eruptions, urticaria, erysipelas in all these there is stinging and burning like coals of fire, at times,and stinging as if needles or small splinters were sticking in.” “The complaints of Apis are attended with more or less violence and rapidity.” And Kent describes the :”effect of a bee sting on a sensitive.” Many people are stung with small effect: but a sensitive”comes down with nausea and anxiety that make him feel that he is dying,and in about ten minutes he is covered with urticaria from head to foot. He stings and burns and wants to be bathed in cold water: he fears that he will die if something is not done to mitigate his dreadful sufferings; rolls and tosses as it he would tear himself to pieces. I have been all that come on after Apis. The antidote for that is Carbolic acid no matter how high you have the Potency. I have seen Carbolic acid administered in that state, and the patient described the sensation of the Carbolic acid going down his throat as a cooling comfort. He says, `Why doctor, I can feel that dose go to the ends of my fingers.'” (Of course Kent here speaks of potentized Carbolic acid! the crude acid would be “a remedy worse than the disease”) Apis is THIRSTLESS, especially in dropsy and fever. Here is a recent instance of how Apis acts in skin troubles. W.S., invalided home some time ago, after 13 years in the tropics with much malaria and much quinine (60 grs. a day) came in September last for an eruption all over the last three weeks. Excessive itching;worse at night; worse from warmth; “it itches and stings as if lying in a bed of nettles”. He got Apis cm. He wrote later. “The outer skin came off wherever it was affected in white powdery form. The new skin is quite clear., In fact the cure is practically complete. It took a definite turn after the Apis doses.” Apis is a great throat medicine. A medicine for diphtheria. But, always, with the Apis swelling,oedema, aggravation from heat, and burning and stinging pains: (or, Nash says, painlessness.) Nash describes the Apis throat: “In those intensely violent and rapid cases of diphtheria in which the whole throat fills right up with oedematous swelling, the uvula hanging down like a transparent sac filled with water, and the patient is in imminent danger of death by suffocation from actual closure of throat and larynx, there is not remedy like Apis.” And he gives a case from his early experiences. “A number of years ago I called to Watkins Glen, N.Y. in consultation in a very bad case of diphtheria. One had already died in the family and four lay dead in the place that day. Over forty cases had died in the place and there was an exodus doing on for fear. Her attending physician, a noble, white-haired old man,and withal a good and able man, said,when I looked up to him and remarked I was rather young to counsel him: ‘Doctor, I am on my attacked. the patient was two rooms away from us,but I could hear her difficult breathing even then. Apis was comparatively a new remedy then for that disease,but as I looked into her Throat saw Apis in a moment, and a few questions confirmed it. I told the doctor what I thought and asked him if he had tried it. He said, ‘No, he had not thought of it, but it was a powerful blood poison; try it.’ It cured the case,and not one case that took this remedy the remedy from the beginning and persistently,died. It was the remedy for the genus epidemics.” But Apis affects the mind also. The Apis patient is sad tearful. Depressed, with constant weeping. No sleep from worrying. Very irritable; and (with Lachesis,and Nux) suspicious and jealous. Wholly joyless and indifferent. But in all this, is worse from heat-hot rooms-both bath. Fear of death. Fear of apoplexy. Then Apis has hyperaesthesia among its peculiarities: “worse from touch-even the hair”., says Nash. And here is a tip of Nash’s : In inflammations and fever, when their is alternate dry heat, then sweating, think of Apis. Homoeopathy is “slow” say people of little understanding. Slow?- Surely only to be expected in some chronic cases with years of inefficient, or wrong treatment behind them. Such cases, even for Hahnemann, might need a couple of years in order to cure; or might have become incurable:-when the utmost to be hoped for,so far as our present knowledge goes, must be palliation. But in acute work, what about this-recently to hand” We all know that one for the the plagues of Egypt, in our day, is ophthalmia. Go there, if you want to study the destruction of eyes, and the various causes that contribute. . Well, a year ago, a once- missionary(now third-year student of medicine) went back to Egypt in the pause in school-work which occurs in late summer and early autumn. One of her eyes got infection, and to the terror of the medical missionaries developed trachoma. They scraped the inside of the lids and, with the aid of a competent ophthalmologist “treated” the condition,and is slowly yielded, leaving the eye undamaged. But she was told to expect recurrences-which duly kept their appointment. When attack No.3 started,she happened to be in the house of a homoeopathic doctor who was not concerned with treatment, but cure; and accordingly the Repertory was asked for the drug that met the symptoms. It worked out to APIS,and she got Apis cm that evening, Next morning she was jubilant;the terror had practically subsided; and by night the eye was well. At that time she was just starting again for Egypt,.and was provided with plenty of Apis cm for the eyes she might find there. Result? Simple amazement!-and she, the not yet qualified, was allowed to treat all the eyes in one Dispensary-real bad eyes!-because, after one dose of the Apis, again and again they cleared up in twenty-four hours. Other curious symptoms that belong to Apis are, anus wide open,with involuntary diarrhoea. (Phos also has,anus open, from which oozes thin stool). In Apis, :”the stools occur with every motion of the body, as if the anus were constantly open.” Then its curious sensations of tension, or tightness:-afraid to cough, because something will burst, or be torn away. Afraid to strain at stood., because something will break. Here are Allen’s back type symptoms: Vertigo and headache. Eyelids much swollen, red and oedematous. No thirst,with heat. Sensation of rawness in anus,with diarrhoea. The stools occur with every motion of the body, as if the anus were constantly open. Sensation in the toes and foot as if too large, swollen and stiff. Most extreme sleepiness. Closed rooms are perfectly intolerable. Headache in warm room. Enough has been said to suggest that whenever and wherever you have swelling-oedema-relief from cold-aggravation from heat- burning and stinging pains, consider APIS. Honey-bee-APIS-its virtues we sing. For all manner of pains that burn and sting. With bad aggravations from all kinds of heat. With puffings and swellings and tension:-repeat, Till you’ve got it by heart, that the Bee is the thing. For all manner of pains that BURN and STING. Then the Bee for effusions!-the Bee stands first For dropsies and fevers with absence of thirst:- Oedema of limbs, or of trunk, or of throat; Effusions,oedema of membranes:- you’ll; note. That its action on kidneys is great, and you’ll see That you’ve scored when the urine’s increase by the Bee. Then the “crie cerebral!”-at the thrill of that “crie” You’ll instantly hurry in quest of the Bee: Or, when swellings and tensions and stiffnesses rule. Says she’ll “burst!” when she coughs, or when straining at stool. By the way, you’ll find Apis a wonderful thing. In ovarian disease, where pains burn and sting.

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